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Gretchen Richer

Gretchen Richer, Director of People Operations at Union Square Hospitality Group in New York City, shares her career timeline and advice for up-and-coming talent.

“My colleagues at USHG provide me with daily inspiration. I get to work with some of the smartest, most creative, most driven people in NYC and they push me to bring my A game in everything I do. In my role, I’m lucky to collaborate with operators from the front and back of house and experts in the fields of HR, Technology, Finance and Marketing – all working toward the common goal of professionalizing our industry and delivering Enlightened Hospitality to all.„

I think an essential “tool” in my role is continued empathy and to be constantly listening to our employees as a means to drive initiatives and projects that impact their daily lives. You cannot communicate enough! I think my team and I need to be constantly communicating over and over again the “why” behind the decisions we make, especially as they impact the broader employee base. I think it’s essential in my role (and in our broader HR Team) to make decisions based on a combination of utilizing data and interpersonal instinct

When I first transitioned from an hourly employee at USC to a manager at Tabla, one of my colleagues gave me this advice – Don’t come into the job trying to change things right away or tell people what to do, but rather listen, ask lots of questions, and take everything in for a few months. Learning what is working, placing value on building trusting authentic relationships and understanding the culture will make a much bigger impact in the end and will allow you to make changes with much more buy in.

Early into her role at USHG, my boss was facilitating a meeting focused on building trust in the workplace and she said that there are “No trust neutral interactions.” Essentially every action we demonstrate and every word we utter is either building or breaking trust among our colleagues. That idea has really stuck with me and I try to think about it often in my day to day decision-making.

Randy Garutti (CEO of Shake Shack) was one of the people I interviewed with for my first management position. First, he told me all the things that were going to be amazing about being a manager – really getting me excited. And then, to my surprise, he told me all of the things that would be challenging and unappealing (long hours, zero time for friends or family, no time to go to the gym, you’ll be frustrated, you’ll make mistakes, people won’t do what you want them to do…) Because he was fully transparent about the experience I was exploring, the onus was much more on me to decide if I was going to opt in to the entire job description. That process helped me enter the position with no surprises as to what I was getting myself into and with clear expectations about what I was going to experience. I try to use that same approach when I conduct interviews and career conversations.

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